Obama’s current rules of engagement seek to protect the lives of the Muslim enemy over our own U.S. servicemen and women. In a letter to the Armed Forces from 2010, Gen. David Petraeus outlines the administration’s goal of “winning the hearts and minds” of the enemy “… through our compassion for the Afghan people. … [W]e must secure and serve the people of Afghanistan … [v]iew our actions through the eyes of the Afghans, and together with our partners, consult with elders before pursuing new initiatives and operations” and “[t]reat them as brothers-in-arms. …”

Recently, the Obama administration signaled that it intends to enter the civil war in Syria by soon commencing a bombing operation. Notwithstanding that only Congress can declare war and any such action to the contrary would be illegal under the U.S. Constitution, the American military must operate under new rules of engagement and policies to avoid continued excessive fatalities and severe injuries among our armed forces in the Middle East.

The rules of engagement are the primary tools for regulating the use of force and perform three functions: 1) provide guidance from the president and secretary of defense, as well as subordinate commanders, to deployed units on the use of force; 2) act as a control mechanism for the transition from peacetime to combat operations (war); and 3) provide a mechanism to facilitate planning.

The tragedy that occurred on Aug. 6, 2011, when 30 U.S. servicemen made up of Navy SEAL Team V, VI and other special ops forces were shot down by the Taliban in a CH-47D Chinook helicopter on a mission called Extortion 17, in obvious retaliation for the killing of Osama bin Laden, highlights Obama’s obsessive concern for protecting his Muslim “brothers” at the expense of our troops. The danger of this policy in practice is seen specifically with regard to this event.

After dark on Aug. 5, 2011, U.S. servicemen were sent on a mission to capture the head of the Taliban in the Tangi Valley, Qari Tahir. Consistent with the current Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs), our servicemen are required to execute missions with at least seven Afghan commandos. While the U.S. military in Afghanistan works with a group called Operational Coordination Group (OCG), made up of the Afghan National Army, the National Director for Security, as well as the National Police Force, the OCG assists the U.S. military with the planning, the vetting and the de-confliction of every operation. The OCG is thoroughly briefed on every mission and has the authority to abort any mission. With the increase of green-on-blue attacks (attacks by the Afghan commandos we are required to work with against U.S. servicemen) and the Taliban’s mission to infiltrate the Afghan police force and other positions closely linked with our military, one can only wonder why we are forcing our troops to play nice with the enemy.

Perhaps not coincidentally, just minutes before the execution of Extortion 17, seven Afghan commandos were switched out. Notably, the substituted Afghans were not listed on the official manifest, and to this day, the American families have not been told who these Afghans are and why they are alive and their sons are not. With the Taliban’s continual promise of increased suicide assaults, “insider attacks” and mass assaults, we put these troops at fatal risk and continue to do so with other servicemen.

According to the military’s official report, it was known on May 11, 2011, just nine days after the capture and killing of master terrorist Osama bin Laden, that the Tangi Valley housed over 100 Taliban traveling from another province with the express intent of shooting down a coalition force aircraft. In fact, several of the families of these fallen heroes believed that their sons knew that they could be sold out by the Afghan commandos and took steps to prepare their last will and testament under great emotional torment and distress.

Notwithstanding substituting Afghan commandos at the last minute, our troops were denied pre-assault fire for their mission. There is such a paranoid fear of killing Muslims that our troops cannot fire upon an armed enemy without being fired upon first. More outrageous is that even if the enemy fires, we are not allowed to engage him with a deadly weapon if there is a chance that civilians are in the vicinity. The Taliban and other terrorist groups use women and children as human shields, knowing that our TTPs do not allow us to attack. While I am not in favor of bombing orphanages and killing women and children, this is war. We cannot and should not tie our troops’ arms behind their backs to protect enemy Muslims, especially since it has been demonstrated time and again that they hate us. We have to accept some collateral damage in war, as the Israeli’s have understood in fighting hateful Muslims for thousands of years.

Another example of Obama’s Muslim outreach being sinister and deadly: To please the commander in chief, his subordinate military commanders like Adm. William McRaven, who was the head of the Afghan theater, invited a Muslim cleric to “pray” over the dead bodies of our fallen servicemen. The prayer the imam gave in Arabic secretly damned the American troops to hell as infidels because they did not believe in Allah.

If we enter war in Syria, the current rules of engagement and outreach to Muslims must be changed to let our fighting men and women do their job. In Afghanistan, we suffered an inordinate amount of casualties because of the current rules of engagement and policies. We unnecessarily lost our most elite SEAL Team VI and other special ops forces. Our military has been ordered by the commander in chief and his military commanders to be so overly concerned about civilian Muslim casualties that our brave men and women are being killed and maimed in record numbers because they cannot take offensive action unless fired upon first. And then when they get killed, their memories are desecrated by Muslim clerics who damn them to hell.